Sharon

Music has been almost a necessity in my life for as long as I can remember. And that would be when I was five years old. My brother was a baby then, and my mother had me following her around while she cleaned our house. There was no stereo in 1948, we had no record player, but we had radio. I only remember the radio because my mother would stop dusting and take me to stand in front of it when Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto Number One was played. She would stand there listening and would always say, "Isn't that the most beautiful music you have ever heard?" I don't remember if I answered.

Before leaving Seattle, the Seattle Symphony performed that concerto during one of its seasons. There was a guest pianist for it, of course, and I bought his CD for my deceased mother - and for myself. It was a little way to honor her.

With every piece of music I have collected during my lifetime, there is a memory associated with it - a memory I find satisfying when I hear it. With Ruby and The Romantics' "Our Day Will Come" I see myself during my freshman year of college, turning up the volume, and just knowing that MY day would come. I didn't have a vision of my day, but the song was my freshman song of hope.

The "Meditation From Thais" takes me to the end of my mother's memorial service, when the attendees were leaving afterwards.

"99 Miles From L.A." takes me right back to a dressing room in a shop at Bellevue Square. I had tried on a swimsuit and was trying to decide on it when that song came on over their piped in music.

Macy Gray's "I Try" reminds me of driving home from the Seattle Park & Ride on a rainy and windy day. I heard it once and had to buy the CD.

Joni Mitchell's "You Turn Me On I'm A Radio" takes me right back to a sunny Washington State day as I drove as fast as my old VW would go, heading to my lover's cabin in the foothills of the Cascades. I got a speeding ticket, but didn'd care.

I had never paid any attention to Ron Reagan, son of the former president, until I saw him being interviewed on the Today Show about a forthcoming book. There was focused discussion on Reagan's Alzheimer's. Since my dad died from that cruel disease, I listened. Then I heard something that jolted me. Ron said his father was dying and was told that the former president didn't recognize anyone or take note of anything happening around him. But when Ron appeared by his bedside, his face flashed recognition and for a moment, he DIDN'T have Alzheimer's.

This shook me because the very same thing happened to me with my father. I flew in from Seattle and headed straight for the hospital, since I was told Daddy was dying. The nurse told me there had been no mental activity for days, and that he didn't understand where he was or what was happening. I took that in and didn't expect anything. However, when I sat down at the head of his bed, he turned his head towards me. As I spoke to him, he seemed to watch my face. I felt recognized. When I got up and walked around the room, his eyes followed me.

When my mother and brother couldn't stand it any longer that night, I stayed for a few minutes. I told Daddy that it was time for him to leave, and that he would see his mother, his half-brother, his father, etc. I said "It's time to go." several times. Then I said my own goodbye to him.

He died within the next three hours. I KNOW he recognized me and knew I was there with him. There are certain things science and medicine cannot explain. But I truly believe he waited for me and heard me.

I've been away from my blog, although I promised myself to write every day. I became dispirited a bit over the Thanksgiving and Chrismas holidays. It was unusual for me. Also didn't think anyone was ready my blog and felt disengaged from others, including friends.

More of my milestone level life events:

--Dated a really nice transexual person in 1975. I had NO idea the person I was attracted to was transexual. After I found out, I was thrown for a loop (whatever that term means), and consulted my closest friend. I was surprised that this friend in particular recommended that I ignore the transexuality and just enjoy the person.

I decided to take that advice, and I am so happy that I did. I discovered that I actually loved someone for exactly who he/she was as a person, and that once I relaxed, I never thought about gender again. It was odd because when dating non-transexuals, I HAD been aware of gender and allowed that awareness to complicate relationships from time to time. It was a great lesson. It IS possible to love a person well, and not give a thought to gender. Actually, doing so "strips" the person clean and you have the honor and privilege of knowing her/him intimately and without any underlying gender bias. The relationship ended because the transgendered person was going through a painful psychological process, and was unstable.

Many years passed and by accident (?), I read about him/her in a local paper. A life long dream had been realized by my former lover. She had become a writer and published novelist of sci-fi books. She was in town to greet fans and sign copies of her latest book.

The news made me very happy. She did it!

--Living in Lexington, KY in 1966, attending the U. of Ky and working on my Ph.d, I lived in off-campus housing. I rented an ancient mother-in-law appartment on the second floor of a very old house. My widowed landlady was elderly and stressed that as long as I rented her upstairs living space, no man would be allowed to spend the night in HER house. I agreed to that rule, since I wasn't dating anyone and even if I were, I would abide by the rule.

Then my closest friend decided that I should meet her older brother, who was single. It wasn't long before the older brother "A.S." was commuting from Cincinatti to Lexington on weekends to see me. He always stayed at a motel and never spent the night at my apartment. I abided by the landlady's rule.

However, on a weekend of dating, A.S. once stayed in my apt. until about two a.m. before he left for the motel. He reappeared at my apartment with coffee and newspapers the next morning, early, as in 6:00 a.m.

Little did I know that the landlady had been closely monitoring comings and goings, and those of A.S.

On Monday afternoon, after returning from classes, the landady cornered me and told me that she no longer wanted me living in her house, since I had broken her "male on premises" rule.

She ordered me to pack my belongings and gave me 24 hours to vacate. A protest would only have made her angry. Stunned, I began to pack up.

There I was, in the middle of a semester, with no place to go. I did find an apartment complex that had a vacant furnished apt., and I moved there ASAP.

I didn't feel shame or anger, but the experience shocked me. I had done nothing improper, had tried to explain that to the landlady, but she KNEW she was right.

To be continued...

My birthday is one week away. It's a good time to review things I've done in my life - good and bad. One of my favorite movies of all time is "Defending Your Life with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep.

--Fought a drunk guy off when he tried to rape me aboard a yacht docked in Miami

--Fought off a stalker who tried to rape me when I was at the U. of Kentucky. He was a postal clerk.

--Filed for CH 7 bankruptcy when I became unable to work and lost my job

--Had my car repossessed

--Passed the Master's oral exam at UNC the morning after an all night awake drinking "situation." [Miracles DO happen.]

--Thrown off a horse during a dead run and survived although I landed on my collar bone. [Miracles DO happen.]

--Avoided a collision on an icey Hwy 2 and did a complete 360 on said icey road as the IDIOT pulling a trailer with a car pulled onto the two lane highway just as I approached.

--Nearly passed out from fear as my husband screamed at me to go straight down the most difficult run at Mt. Baker ski area.

--Fought off a neighbor's Sharpei dog twice when it attacked my little Cairn on two separate occasions. Sharpei was put down.

--Before I quit my very last job, I asked my "boss" to step outside for a short chat. He did so and I told him off better than anyone could have. He had it coming for hiring and abruptly firing (to avoid paying unemployment comp) 5 women with toddlers who had been on a daycare waiting list for welfare moms for over a year.

--Was fired via voice mail by the "boss" I told off. Felt WONDERFUL.

--Drove back and forth between Seattle and Florida four times and loved every minute of it.

--Earned the name of "Police Bitch" when I intervened with gang members at corner of 3rd and Pine because said gang members punched and kicked an elderly homeless man waiting for the bus.

--Went cross-country skiing for the last time on Christmas Eve at Lake Kacheess

--Considered not returning to the U.S. when a handsome guy from Portugal asked me to marry him. [Think he was lying.]

--Was with my father when he was dying.

--Went disco dancing every Saturday night in 1977, without fail, at the Boren St.

--Took three dogs through obedience school, which I needed.

--Rescued a total of seven cats who were dumped in the small greebelt adjoining my apt. bldg. in Seattle. Found homes for all.

--Won the title of National Cyberparalegal in 1997.

--Met and chatted with actor Hal Holbrook backstage three times when he was performing "Mark Twain Tonight" in Seattle.

--Dropped out of my Ph.D. program with only one course left to take and a disertation to write, because I was depressed and landlocked in Lexington, KY.

--Didn't decide to go to college until my senior year of high school and had to bring my grades up.

--Was nearly strangled to death by a jealous lover for no reason other than suspicion.

--Have been essentially homeless 3 times in my life.

--Dated a guy named Carlos for about six months because he was such a good dancer.

--Protested Vietnam War and sheltered (one night) guys wanted by police for making and using molotov coctails.

--Was voted "best dressed professor" at Seattle Pacific. [I shopped at Nordstrom.]

--Had a makeover and posed for photos for a newspaper ad for a Seattle hair salon, "Hair on Broadway."

To be continued...



--

As always, it's November 22nd and I am remembering where I was and what I was doing when President Kennedy was killed. I was in my junior year at U. of S. FL in Tampa. Listening to the radio in my dorm room, I was ironing. Walter Cronkite came on the radio and the rest is history.

No one had a TV in his or her room (and no co-ed dorms), and like silent and lost sheep, students, one by one and in small groups, walked over to the Student Union Lounge where there was a TV. People sat in chairs and stared at the TV in absolute silence. The silence is something I also remember. Like the silence of the skies on 9/11/2001.

I will remember and grieve a true and patriotic loss for John Kennedy for as long as my memory lasts. Since that day, I have never, ever forgotten November 22nd.

Also today, I realized that I have never used or spoken the word "awesome." Sure, I'm tired of hearing it, but I've made no effort to purge it from my vocabulary. I suppose I don't use the word because it doesn't suit my communication "style." I'm curious. I would be interested in finding out how "awesome" replaced the old "neat" and even "cool."

Of course the two scariest words in the English language are "President "Palin."

Right now I'm listening to a Seattle radio station, my all time favorite, KMTT "The Mountain." Since I'm not in Seattle, I'm listening via Internet.

I discovered it in the seventies and I've grown old with the DJ who has been with the station as far back as I can remember. KMTT plays music from all decades but the 1940's, and mixes it up in its own special way. One minute I'm listening to Pearl Jam and a song I've never heard because I don't "know" Pearl Jam. But over half of my music collection consists of music I first heard on KMTT.

Over my last 20 years or so in Seattle, KMTT would be sold and transformed into an elevator music, "easy listening" station. The same DJ would be there, left with the boring stuff. But over time, the playlists would return to "normal" and all would be right. Then, even with its loyal listeners and fans, the station would be sold yet again and become elevator music until it would gradually become itself again.

Today, KMTT is listed as an "Adult Alternative" station. That's the perfect category because I'll hear songs from just about every genre. I first heard R.L. Burnside, the recently deceased blues great, on KMTT. I remember the DJ saying he was going to play something really different, and to keep listening to the song, "I Just Went On and Told Her" because "...it's a surprising track." And it certainly was. As soon as I had a chance, I went to Silver Platters and bought the R.L. Burnside CD with that song on it.

I doubt KMTT would survive in any other market other than Seattle and environs. It's just too unique.

I'm a latebloomer when it comes to music. I never listened to The Who when they were hot. But because KMTT played "Eminence Front", I own a "Who" CD.

After writing about my fifteen minutes of paralegal fame that began in 1997, I remembered how sad and hopeless I felt after seeing a movie called "Working Girl." I saw it in a theater with my partner. It was the "romcom" with Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford.

It was a funny film, but at the end, I found myself weeping for a few seconds. The working girl in the movie became an overnight success at her rather posh adversising firm (?). She out-foxed her snobby superior and even got the man. What made me weep was the fact that I was not working in a professional environment as I had in the past, and saw no hope of returning to it, making good money, wearing designer pantsuits, nice dresses, and carrying a briefcase.

I felt like such a failure after I saw that movie, since it was a reminder of better days. It would be another three yers before I completed paralegal school and landed my first job at a "tier 1" law firm.

During my last couple of years of working as a litigation paralegal, I was on the merry-go-round. I calculated that after getting ready for work, traveling to work, working my 7.5 or 8.0 hrs., traveling home from work, walking the dog, cleaning the litter box, making dinner, making my lunch for the next day, I only had two hours of personal free time. Two hours of a life. I wanted to put a halt to my daily grind in the worst way possible.

And you might say I did just that, but certainly not intentionally. I found out that I needed both hips replaced, and that I was very, very anemic. I had also been having chest pain (angina). My bad health was the game changer for me. I could no longer work.

In rememberence of things past:

Windows 98. Today I worked with my oldest and most beloved laptop, my Dell Inspiron 7500. When I bought it in 1997, it had every single feature you could have on a laptop in those days. You could play CD's and DVD's on it, but there was no "burn" device at that time.

A laptop was a necessity for me then. Because I won a national legal research contest, once it was "news" in my profession, I was invited to speak at the National Court Reporter's convention in Orlando. I did over a dozen presentations for CLE companies, I did a presentation for the WA State Bar Association at a large auditorium at the U. of WA. I was interviewed by "Washington Law and Politics." My law firm sent me to the states where it had other offices - to educate attorneys. I was asked by the national paralegal association to write an article for the "Reporter" and did so.

It was all about the Internet. My task was to demonstrate how much solid information could be found on on the Web. At that time, some of us knew what the Web was, but amazingly, most people had no clue. It was also a time when you used various search engines to find information online. There was no Google, just some search engines that were better than others.

It was pre-911, so there was a great deal of Federal, state, and local information found online, eliminating an occasional FOIA request. The Social Security Death Index was pretty up-to-date.

But I digress. Since I only had a desktop computer and had so many speaking engagements, I HAD to have a good, reliable computer.

My first Inspiron was a dream. It never, EVER failed me. When I did my presentations, I was online, with my computer screen projected on a large screen for attendees to see. I couldn't have a faulty Internet connection, and thanks to seanet.com, I never had a failure.

Windows 98 allowed you to FIND things on your computer, regardless of where they might be hiding. Windows 98 was stable. It never froze up.

Those were the days! The Internet was not completely a mechanism for advertising. It was almost magical. The Web was there for users, not data mining companies.

I tried to remember my first AOL screen name today and couldn't remember it. I've had too many screen names since then, I suppose. I subscribed to AOL when it was pretty much unknown. In fact, a friend bought me an AOL sweatshirt and I didn't mind wearing it!

My beloved machine barely wanted to work today, but I was able to copy photo files onto its ZIP drive and then use a portable ZIP drive with my newest laptop to view my best photographs. I have managed to preserve them because of the quality of my first laptop.

It felt good to get that dreaded chore done today. I had been procrastinating.

Although I live with my brother, I have another brother who lives in Oregon.

My Oregon brother is not related to me by blood, but by love, caring, trust, respect, common values, and loyalty. For good measure, he also has a great sense of humor that we share.

T. knows me well enough to know who I am outside of the context of my family and relatives.

T. and I met because one of us chose to sit beside the other, at the back of a classroom at a community college in 1991. We both became paralegals and fast friends.

I could write a long magazine type article about T. and the history of our friendship. He has been with me as a friend during some of the most difficult years of my entire life.

One of the most admirable qualities of my Oregon brother is his ability to speak the truth to me, not knowing how I might react to it. Most of my friends are very upfront with me, but T. can go where others fear to tread. He knows how stubborn and determined I am, and ventures to enter my comfort zone in order to give me feedback or information he knows I should have.

T. is a straight shooter with others as well. That's something I admire tremendously. T. is T., and is man enough to share who he is with me and with others.

The only thing that T. doesn't know about me is that if he suddenly lost his good health for any reason, I would be there for him in every capacity available to me. As bad as I physically feel sometimes, I know for sure that I would pull myself together, take Topper with me, and show up at his front door, ready to do whatever possible, and be there for him.

I don't think T. realizes that he has a sister-in-waiting.

The evenings I enjoyed the most on Lady Day were during the winters. With rough waters and high winds, we would slowly meander through the San Juans during the day, and dock at night. Sometimes there would be one other yacht besides J.C.'s but usually, we were the only boaters tied up in the stormy darkness.

J.C. truly enjoyed cooking and was quite the gourmet. He preferred to prepare our dinners while I sipped a drink and stoked the fire in the fireplace. Heaven for me.

After dinner, J.C. would get out the chess set and tune in to any radio station his communication equipment would bring in. Most of the time, the station would be Canadian and we would listen to whatever came through. It was enough just to have a connection via radio to the outside world, from which it seemed we were happily isolated.

We played chess, talked a bit when we felt like it, and went to bed early, letting the fire die out first.

J.C. is responsible for my most memorable New Year's Eve ever. We had left one tiny island and arrived at another after dark. I had no idea where we were, but J.C. knew who the islanders were and how small the dock would be.

He asked me if I felt like living it up with a party on the island, and of course I said I did. He recommended dressing up just a bit, but warned me that I would have to wear shoes that could handle large boulders. I had no idea what I was in for.

Once the Lady Day was tied up, we freshened up and changed into our best clothes. J.C. climbed off the boat first, and watching what he had to do to reach the dock and shoreline, I was ready to turn around and go back inside. It was necessary to scale the slick wet boulders beside and around the dock to get to the top and then to the island. J.C. had to coach me from boulder to boulder. He was calm and patient while I was silent and petrified. I did NOT want to fall into icy waters and drown.

Once we were on the dock, I realized it was freezing cold and raining lightly, and we hurried towards shore, where I immediately saw a tavern, just feet from the tiny pier.

It was packed that New Year's Eve, with barely room to nudge our way inside. There was a real party going on in the tavern, liquor flowing and loud music, the likes of which I had never seen or heard. J.C. said it was possibly the only New Year's Eve party within many miles around. There was a large group of Native Americans providing the only music for dancing and clapping hands. Each musician was playing a homemade instrument. The most recognizable one to me was the proverbial aluminum washtub turned upside down, with a long stick and strings attached. This was the bass player. The other instruments were creative and homemade as well. It actually sounded pretty good.

I had planned on nursing a drink in a corner while J.C. greeted people, but the moment J.C. left my side, a tall woman approached me, grabbed my hand, took my drink, and started dancing with me. So we danced.

I dimly remember returning to the boat hours later that night, drunk but apparently able to navigate the climb down the slippery boulders. I know J.C. couldn't have carried me down and kept his balance, so I did it myself.

It was a few minutes past midnight, cold on board, and all I remember is crawling under a comforter.

And I've never forgotten that tavern and the crowd who welcomed us and made dancing so much fun that night.

About six months after my divorce many years ago, a man came into my life when I least expected it. At that time, I was leading two lives. I was a college professor by day, and a heavy drinking alcoholic every night. At any particular moment, I had no idea what my feelings were. I was in what I call Hell, when a person is pain but doesn't have the ability to know it, feel it, or stop it. Therefore, the person in Hell is removed from herself or himself, simply going with the flow, not even making any actual decisions about the daily life he or she is leading. I dated anyone who asked me out, as long as I knew I would have access to alcohol.

J.C., this new man who would be in my life for the next two years, was an alcoholic in recovery for some 15 years. He understood my lifestyle at that time, and did not care that always drank the hard liquor drinks he would offer me or buy for me when we were together.

He was a wealthy businessman in Seattle who usually worked in his downtown office about one day per week. J.C. was a college graduate who had earned a degree in English literature. He enjoyed discussing books and authors with me, which is something I had only experienced with others in graduate school and with my teaching colleagues.

J.C. owned the largest yacht I had ever been on, a Hatteras. Since he enjoyed the Lady Day year-round in the Pacific Northwest, it was the type of yacht that could easily weather the Winter storms. It had a nice wood-burning fireplace in the main cabin, a great galley, and had plenty of areas for daytime napping. I found it impossible to be motoring in a yacht, far from everyday life, and stay awake.

Aboard the Lady Day, it was just J.C. and me. He needed no crew. He did everything necessary in our travels. Although I offerred, he never needed or wanted my help in navigating and handling the boat. J.C. was calm, knew every inch of Lady Day, and had been yachting for most of his adult life. The only assistance he ever asked for was as a lookout for deadheads, enormous floating logs.

Since I had a full-time job, I saw J.C. on weekends, college vacations, and summers. We spent most of out time together on the Lady Day. When your boat says "Seattle" on it under its name, you can cruise the San Juans in a Hatteras regardless of the season. But J.C. especially preferred to cruise the San Juans during the late Fall and Winter months.

During those seasons, the smaller yachts were in their slips, and the only other yachting people in the San Juans were usually some of J.C.'s friends.

I drank less when I was aboard the Lady Day, since such a great calm always came over me. A typical day in the San Juans would be going from one island to another. We didn't tie up at every island and would sometimes anchor offshore of one.

To Be Continued...

On election day, as Americans go to the polls to ensure more Federal gridlock and elect "representatives" who live in the pocketbooks of major corporations in our country or overseas, I want to write a brief story about my 10 month-old puppy.

Topper knows what ice cubes are and that I drop them when getting a handful of cubes out of the ice-maker in the freezer. He hears me open the freezer door and goes to his place to wait for a dropped cube.

Last week, I was filling a glass with ice cubes and dropped one. Topper got his teeth onto it and pranced into the living room to lick and chew. I happened to be watching him enjoying his cube. Even with the air-conditioning running, it was warm enough to melt the cube pretty fast.

All of a sudden, I noticed that Topper was using his paws and claws to try to dig up the big area rug. The cube "disappeared" before his eyes, and he KNEW it went under the rug, where he last saw it.

I had to intervene to prevent damage to the area rug. Topper didn't give up the search for the lost cube until I was able to pick up a portion of the rug and show him that the cube wasn't there. He gave me a quizzical look, since it made perfect sense to him in his dog world - the cube should have been there!

Music has always been a big part of my life. I can't carry a tune and don't play an instrument, but I listen to music every day at some point. When I do, I often think of how fortunate I was to live for 36 years in Seattle, which is a music town.

I once made a list of all live performances I was fortunate enough to attend over the years. In FL, I attended my first opera, "Carmen" with Rise Stevens. At USF, I was treated to Count Basie and other big bands. At UNC, it was Charlie Bird on the grass and Dionne Warwick in an auditorium.

In Seattle in no particular order: Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, Beach Boys, Al Green, Judy Collins x3, Ramsey Lewis (Jazz Alley) x5, Marianne Faithful at the BackStage x2, Laurie Anderson x3, Frank Sinatra (1970?), Bette Midler x2, Tracy Chapman, Joan Armatrading x 2, Bill Withers, Dave Brubeck, Hillary Hahn (violenist), Federica Von Stade x2, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Laverne Baker (Bumbershoot), k.d. Lang (Bumbershoot), Ravi Shankar (audience applauded when he was just tuning up), and I know I'm overlooking someone or a group.

I would have sold my body for a ticket to see and hear Pink Floyd.

In my humble opinion, I think the best backup musicians I ever heard were with Joan Armatrading. Biggest disappointment: Beach Boys (we left early). Biggest surprise: Frank Sinatra. Even in a huge venue, he had you. Never missed when the chance was there: Laurie Anderson.

Would dearly love to hear/see in person: Macy Gray, Susan Boyle, Alanis Morissette, Toni Childs.

According to Jane Fonda (I like her) who is now in her seventies and looking as if she is in her early forties, I have been unknowingly conducting a "life review." Her new book guides readers in examining and writing THEIR life reviews. Apparently, Jane Fonda learned a great deal from doing hers.

I seem to be learning a lot from doing either the same thing or something very much like it.

I'm reading John Fowles' book, "The Magus" for the second time. I first read it in 1971. Ever since I read the book, I've had a passage that Fowles quotes from T.S. Eliot on my bedroom wall.

At the first reading of "The Magus," I was a raging, out-of-touch alcoholic. Now I'm reading it with 34 years of sobriety and hard work in therapy. I am remembering certain parts of the book, but essentially, I'm reading it for the first time - sober and self-aware.

The quotation from Eliot:

"We shall not cease from exploration.
And at the end of all our exploring,
We shall arrive at the beginning
And know the place for the first time."

"The Magus" is, in my opinion, Fowles' best novel. "Daniel Martin" is also a fine book by Fowles. I may read that one again as well. Both novels are not easy reading, but page-turners nevertheless. That is the genius of John Fowles, in my opinion. He challenges your mind and entertains you at the same time.

Right now, "The Magus" is happily the best book to read while I conduct my "life review."

Growing up in the fifties in Florida, I was cursed by an inability to put on weight. I was apparently normal is size and growth until age five. At that particular age, two things happened - my brother was born, and some type of struggle with my mother insued. Whatever she wanted me to eat was something I refused to eat. If I did eat fattening things like ice cream, I never, ever gained weight.

It was a type of anorexia. The back pages of magazines had ads for "Weight On", a pill you could take. I always wanted to get my hands on Weight On but never could. My mother had absolute control over me and would not allow the ordering of a product like that.

I hid my Twiggy body as much as possible and as often as possible. My legs were like twigs. I was teased and bullied for my extreme thiness. When my two neighborhood friends wanted to punish me, they called me "incubator baby."

It wasn't until I left Florida and felt happy going to grad school at UNC that my appetite reappeared and I "filled out." What a relief.

Although I had the opposite problem, I easily identify with women who are overweight or obese. I know what it's like to be pointed at for looking different.

There was another execution last night. It took place a few minutes after midnight. I found the big roach in the bathroom doorjamb, after I had closed the door and was getting ready to shower. I keep a grabber in the bathroom, and it has become my tool for catching and excuting by toilet flushing - these huge roaches.

I don't bother to even mention roaches to Terry anymore. When I do so, I get the lecture on how it's impossible (which it is) to live in Florida without roaches. So now I spray insect killer stuff in select bathroom areas, and except for last night, I always check behind the bathroom door for a roach.

There is never a small roach or two roaches at one time. It's always what I think is The Grandfather of All Roaches.

They are SO hard to kill. Flushing by execution requires that I drop the roach (via grabber) into the toilet AS IT IS FLUSHING. Dropping a smashed roach into a still toilet bowl seems to revive the roach and give it a second life.

My brother is right. Roaches shall inherit the Earth.

Today I have thought of Smokey, wondering how he is. I worked in downtown Seattle for eleven years and went to and from work via bus. Walking from my bus stop to the office in the mornings was a five city block sprint. Walking from the office to the bus at the end of the day was three city blocks. If I went out to lunch, it meant another two or three blocks of walking.

There were regular street people inhabiting my walking routes. Smokey was a Vietnam vet who lived on the street with his dog, "Mama." Every time I saw Smokey, I gave him a dollar. Mama was always well fed and cared for. She guarded Smokey's blanket and his few belongings when he was away, using a bathroom.

Smokey was always pale, quite thin, had a bit of a beard, and wore an old army jacket. During the years I knew him, I never once smelled alcohol on him. I asked him one afternoon how he managed sleeping on the streets downtown during the overnight hours. He explained that the police would use the loudspeakers on their cars and wake him up, telling him to move on. He would pick up and move to another location to sleep until he would be told to move again. Smokey was out there with just a blanket in freezing temperatures. With no cover in the rain, he would get close to building entrances.

Smokey was always soft-spoken and respectful of others. He never, ever asked for a handout. One year at Christmas I left the office to walk over to Macy's and shop. Walking through Westlake Plaza, I noticed Smokey's blanket with Mama guarding it by herself. If you approached the blanket, Mama just stared at you. I doubt she would have ever bitten anyone who touched Smokey's things, unless she was unfamiliar with the person. She knew me.

In Macy's, I decided to surprise Smokey. I bought him three gift wrapped boxes of Frango chocolates, with different flavors. I walked back to Smokey's blanket and Mama was still there by herself. I put the packages under the edge of the blanket and walked away. It was a selfish act on my part, since it gave me pleasure to imagine what Smokey's reaction might have been when he found his gift.

There were times when Smokey would be missing for several months. When I would see him again, I would ask where he had been. He always answered, "Oh, just had a cough that got bad and had to see to it."

Then Smokey went missing for over a year. I always looked for him. One winter afternoon I was waiting for the bus at First and Pine when I noticed Smokey standing there with Mama at his side. I was so happy to see him. I went over and asked where he had been. That was one time when I saw a slight smile on his face. He said, "I got me a little apartment down near Burien. I come into town now and then to get to the VA clinic because of the AIDS." He had the first smile I'd ever seen from him when he told me that he had an apartment. His bus was pulling up to the curb, so we had to say goodbye. That's the last time I saw Smokey.

May he still have his apartment, some warm clothes, medicines, and Mama.

Living under the same roof with a sibling when you are both in the latter third of one's life can be interesting, fun, and frustrating from time to time.

Life lived with my widowed brother in this, my age of wisdom, allows me to do one of the things I truly enjoy - pondering. For example, when I first moved in with my brother, we talked a lot about our parents. My brother said, "I'm Daddy." Daddy was always a worrier, a pessimist, and fearful of life in general.

After living with my brother for four years now, I see my brother as more like my mother, not my father. There are elements of both parents' personalities, of course, but Mama has won out, in my opinion. He is Mama, with a dash of Daddy.

As for me, I felt I became my mother around the age of forty-five. When she passed away at age eighty-two, I split up her belongings with my brother. I kept the items I knew he would never be interested in having around.

As I combed through Mama's framed photographs, I decided to shift some photos around - remove a photo from a frame, clean the frame and glass and put in a different old family photo. That's when I found out that for many, many years, living over 3,000 miles away from Mama, I had been doing the same thing with photos: if I decided to put a photo in a frame with a photo already in it, I put it in and did not remove the first photo. Just one little practice I have in common with Mama.

Actually, I've learned that I'm generally a mixture of both parents, but I lean more towards the persona of my mother. And here is the rub: my when my brother is "Mama" and I am "Mama" and we are both around each other all day, we can irritate the Hell out of each other. But we make it work and have the good sense to give a wide berth, here under this roof.

After my grandfather died, my grandmother continued to live down the street from us, on another block but on the same side of the street. She had never driven a car.

On Sunday mornings, my mother, brother and I would go by car to pick her up en route to the eleven a.m. service.

One Sunday morning, my mother honked the horn in the driveway to let my grandmother know we were there to take her with us. Grandma came to the front door without her purse. She was laughing so hard she couldn't get a sentence or even a word out of her mouth. Tears of laughter were running down her face. My mother turned off the engine and we all got out of the car.

Grandma had to usher us back to her bedroom to explain why she was laughing uncontrollably. She pointed to a can of hair spray and a can of roach spray. She had confused the two cans and had sprayed her hair with roach killing spray. Then we all (minus my brother) broke into laughter.

My mother went to work wiping off the roach spray and working with Grandma's hair. We made it to church that morning, but we were a few minutes late.

Lots of things make me laugh, but I always laugh the hardest at myself. It's a gift from Grandma and from my mother.

I still laugh at something that happened to me in 1971. I was an avid alpine skiier. I was dating a really sweet man who gave me a nice Christmas present - a shiny gold ski outfit. I preferred my usual ski attire, but wanted to show the man my appreciation.

Off to ski we went on a Saturday morning at Snowqualmie Pass. We took the intermediate chair lift up and got off. I started down the run first, with my ski date guy behind me. I hit a deep mogul about halfway down the run and shot into the air and then landed on the snow, on my back.

When I hit the snow, that shiny gold outfit seemed to be made of ice. I got absolutely NO traction after I fell. Instead, off flew my hat, skiis, poles and even gloves - everything but that super slick outfit. I began to spin around as I continued a rapid slide toward the bottom of the run. My arms and legs were extended as I tried to find something, anything that I could grab hold of as I spun.

While spinning around, I became aware that other skiiers riding up on the same chair were looking at me, pointing, and laughing. Some of them would yell out, "ARE YOU OK?" Of course I was moving so fast I had no way of answering them.

I didn't see my ski date until I smashed into other skiiers at the bottom of the run. Those poor people tried to hop out of my way as I eventually came to a stop at someone's ski boots.

Never wore that outfit again. Not long afterwards, all ski wear made of that slick material was banned at the various ski areas.

I laugh about that fall to this day. I only wish I could have seen myself as those other skiiers saw me while they rode up the chair lift.

ODDS AND ENDS:

Standing on a downtown street corner in Seattle, a scruffy thirty-something man came up to me and asked me if I had fed the camels. I told him that I most certainly HAD fed the camels.

Other than "Little Golden Books" for children, the first book I ever owned was presented to me at summer Sunday school. It was a brand new Bible. I walked home in broiling sunshine, pausing now and then on the sidewalk to open up the book and sniff the fresh paper. Ever since then, when I buy a new book, I first open it up in the middle area and sniff the "new book scent." "New book scent" is topped only by "puppy breath scent."

I love shoes and have a lot of them. Now that I can't walk more than a few steps, I still enjoy wearing shoes. Growing up, I got one pair of new black and white saddle oxfords each Fall, as school began for the year. That was it - one pair of well-kept shoes to wear for the rest of the year. At home, I wore cheap rubber thongs.

I am technically homeless. Were it not for my brother and his love and generosity, I would be living someplace, but I'm not at all sure where. And yet, to this very day, I have never, ever wished that I owned my own home. Perhaps it's my nature as a Sagittarian.

I was also homeless in 1978. I was living with a partner who believed (wrongly) that I was having an affair. Under a threat of violence, I took what clothes and personal belongings I could, along with my Cairn Terrier, Pepper, and lived with several different friends. At the time, I had chickenpox! There I was: winter in Seattle, severe case of chickenpox, and no home for me and Pepper. I finally found an "appartmentette."

In high school, I never fit in until my junior year. I sat behind Faith Stewart, who was witty and popular. She brought out my inner wit and I blossomed because of it. When I graduated, I got a special honor on the gym stage from my classmates: a large paint brush with a ribbon on it. There was a plaque with it that read, "Jane Knight, Class Artist."